


Now I Must Say More Than Ever

by thebluecardigan



Series: Neither Wonder Nor Blame [2]
Category: Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 19:36:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15347160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebluecardigan/pseuds/thebluecardigan
Summary: In which Marianne and Brandon sort a few things out over leftover wedding cake





	Now I Must Say More Than Ever

It’s been two years since Marianne spent a weekend in the ICU over a very nasty case of pneumonia, and she likes to think she’s a different person. More measured in her responses, more willing to listen to reason, less likely to be entirely carried away by feelings. She’s gained back most of the weight that she lost when she was sick, but she cut off her hair and she’s kept it short, so she still looks different. It’s been a reminder to her when she looks in the mirror: you’re not the same girl you used to be; you’ve grown and changed and you’re far more resilient than you could ever give yourself credit for. This new Mari, though, hasn’t quite shed the old habit of being plagued by overwhelming feelings (although perhaps this is what Elinor had dealt with all along). After everything, Mari feels like she should know better than to pine after boys, but she’s found someone and sometimes it feels like her heart is eating itself.

When she met Christopher Brandon, she was dating Willoughby, and she was too caught up in the charming man-child who carried her up the stairs when she broke her ankle to notice the man who showed her how to manage the stairs herself. Chris was an army vet with a desk job, and the difference between his 30 and her 22 might as well have been two decades. They got along, because he was respectful and didn’t make her uncomfortable, but that was most decidedly all. 

During Mari’s stint in the hospital, Chris helped Elinor in whatever way he could (quiet, barely noticeable, but somehow always there when someone needed to be). He got shoehorned into reading to Mari when she couldn’t sleep, and for hours beside the hospital bed he would keep her company and distract her when she was in too much pain. She knew it was a favor to Elinor for a wayward sister, but she still felt safer and steadier when he sat there. On a particularly rough day, when she’d been crying and felt young and stupid and worthless, Chris had taken her hand and told her about how he’d shattered his ankle in Iraq because he was careless and in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn’t himself for a long time, he explained. It was a story that, told by the wrong person, could have made her feel smaller and more foolish, but instead made her feel valid for the first time in a very long while.

By the time Elinor and Edward had sorted things out, Chris and Mari were more friends than acquaintances, and even though she wasn't anywhere near wanting to date anyone again at first, she felt that he was one of the people dearest to her. By the time the wedding had finally rolled around, Marianne was feeling so frustrated she might actually scream. It’d been a year and a half, she realized, since she’d started to be in love with him. He meant far more to her than just a friend, and it’d been months since she’d realized she felt that way. Rather than do anything stupid, though, she decided to hold out for the wedding, and handle the potential ensuing drama when she was no longer worried about cake and dress fittings. (She thought to herself that even Elinor would have to admire her patience.)

…

Chris was, at the very least, obligated to dance once with Mari because he was best man and she was maid of honor. She interpreted this to mean that it was her responsibility to keep him on the dance floor as long as she could. He couldn’t honestly say he minded. (This didn’t mean that he wasn’t protesting, though.) After that one slow dance the whole bridal party did to cap off the more formal bit, the DJ shifted into livelier things and it didn’t matter too much who was dancing with who. Then, “Come on Eileen” came on.

The first time Chris saw Mari, she was banging away at a train station piano, playing “Come on Eileen” with all the gravitas of a concerto. He stood transfixed, just far enough back not to be strange, and watched with a kind of awe. When she struck the last chord and lifted her fingers from the keyboard, he blinked and tried to shake himself out of it. Just at that moment, his friend Elinor came by, apparently looking for the girl at the piano. It happened that the young women were sisters, and Elinor gladly introduced them. Mari was polite but clearly uninterested. Chris wouldn’t let himself play the song more than twice after he went home.

Now the same song—which that he privately thought of as theirs—was playing over the speakers, and it was all he could do not to bend down and put his arm around her without reason. Out of the blue, she took one of his hands, then the other, pulling him into her rhythm and then spinning out away from him before coming back. He followed her lead, and somehow they were suddenly in the middle of things, very close, and she had closed her eyes and was bopping her head and swinging their arms back and forth. It wasn’t a song where they would find themselves slowly leaning in to each other; in a moment, the tempo had picked back up and Mari was once again a whirl of blue dress. She grinned, though, and giggled, and when the song was finished she reached up on tiptoes to shout in his ear, “Thanks for being a good sport.” He smiled and shrugged and eventually they snuck off to cover the getaway car in shaving cream.

…

The day after the wedding, Marianne went by Chris’s flat to see if she could get him to take some of the leftover cake. This seemed like an excellent plan until she found herself in the midst of an unexpected rush on the Tube and it started raining as she walked the remaining blocks between the station and his flat. She nearly dropped the box while trying to ring the bell, and by the time Chris opened the door, Mari was struggling not to adopt the attitude of a wet cat. Fortunately for all involved, Chris had the wisdom not to show that he found humor in the situation as he hustled her in the front door.

“Let me get you a towel. Here, I’d best put the kettle on, too. You didn’t take an umbrella today?”

“I can’t say I thought of it. I just hope the cake didn’t get wet.”

“More to the point, why did you decide to haul half a very large cake across London this morning?”

“It wasn’t clear across.” She sneezed. He handed her another towel. “I really ought to have checked the forecast.”

“You all right?”

“Well, aside from being damp…”

“Your sister got married yesterday and I can’t help but think you’re taking this oddly.”

“It was quiet in the flat.”

“I can’t say I’ll be much louder.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, in that case, do you want to see if there’s anything dry to put on?”

“Be careful; I might steal your jumper.”

“I’d rather that than Elinor asking why I let her sister get hypothermia.”

…

Marianne wound up in a jumper with the cuffs turned over thrice and a pair of joggers with the drawstring pulled tight. She left her clothes hanging in the loo and padded out into the kitchen in bare feet. Chris had made tea and was cutting cake. She took the mugs to the table, and he came and sat down with their cake. She smiled up at him, and he set the plates down with a clatter. “Can you imagine how much would be left if we hadn’t talked Edward out of carrot cake?”

Mari laughed, “I still can’t believe how much work that took to plan.”

“They seemed happy with it though.” Chris said, thoughtfully.

“They’re perfect. And you even danced!”

“I seem to recall you weren’t going to let me do anything else.”

“You were the best man!” She protested. “It was your job to look like you were having a good time!”

“I think we pulled it off.”

“And your ankle isn’t hurting too much?”

“Like I said, I wouldn’t do it most nights, but that one’s worth a limp for a couple days.”

She knew he wouldn’t want to belabor it, so she moved on, jabbing him somewhere else.“And you clearly did love ‘Come on Eileen.’”

“I like plenty of songs”

Mari rolled her eyes. “You actually started to look like you were dancing there, not just swaying on the floor to appease me.”

“It’s got good memories.” Chris muttered.

“Yeah?” When he didn’t seem inclined to fill the silence, Mari continued, “I always liked that one.”

“I know.”

“You do?” She was determined, this time, to see why. “And how’s that?”

“The first time I met you, you were playing that.”

“It’s my impatient song. I play it when I’m frustrated or tired of waiting.” It felt really good to take her feelings out on the keys, fortissimo and allegro in a song not at all intellectual. “I don’t know if I remember that time, though.”

“It was in a railway station—you were waiting for Elinor, I think.”

“And you remember the song?”

“It was a good day.” Chris admitted.

“For me, too.” Mari agreed.

“You said you don’t remember—“

“Well, I met you, didn’t I?”

“Marianne—“

She took a deep breath and decided this was as good of an opening as any. “You know, my sister said something once about you fancying me.”

Chris suddenly found his cake very interesting. “Mari, I don’t know if—“

“Look, let me finish, please? I know that’s a terrible start. I was such a disaster when you met me, and for so long afterwards, what with my ankle and getting sick and the fact that I was just such an idiot about the people in my life who were so much better to me than I deserved.” Chris looked up and seemed to be ready to interrupt again, so she held up a hand. “They were, though. And you especially. You barely knew me when you taught me how not to fall down the stairs on crutches, and you spent so much time helping my family when I was in the hospital, and sitting with me and reading to me. And I know I shouldn’t read into it because you’re the kind of guy who’d just do that, and we’ve become such good friends that I really, really hope this isn’t just destroying everything, but is there any chance that maybe last night and the song or, well, any of that meant anything?”

Chris ran his hand over his face and didn’t say anything for a minute, and Mari was trying to decide what to do about her clothes if she was going to make a run for it. (This confession had been poorly thought out in multiple ways.) Just as she was deciding she would rather get out of there than be stuck extra minutes trying to look like she wasn’t doing the walk of shame in his clothes, Chris stood up. Not to be outdone, Mari did too. He walked around the table and she started to back away, not standing between him and the door in case he was trying to leave. He didn’t walk to the door, but over to her instead. Putting one hand on her arm and the other on her cheek, he leaned in slightly. Before he had finished asking, “Is this ok?” Marianne closed the distance between them.

When they broke apart, Mari looked up at him, and smiling this time, asked, “So that wasn’t a massive mistake?”

“Not at all.” Chris laughed. “You know, I think ‘Come on Eileen’ might be my favorite song now.”

…

Elinor and Edward come back from their honeymoon and stop by Chris’s to move out the last of Ed’s boxes and return his key. They walk into the sitting room before Chris or Mari have noticed—namely, because the latter pair is snogging on the sofa. Elinor and Edward have the decency to look slightly embarrassed—though Elinor is giggling and Mari could swear she sees Ed pass her sister a fiver while he mutters something about leaving a sock on the door. (It could have been worse, Mari thinks, even though she’s still trying to hide behind her hair.) When the newlyweds go to get the boxes, Mari smiles and sits on Brandon’s knee and thinks that perhaps she is not done being demonstrative with her feelings after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Laure001 for commenting and asking for this!
> 
> Find me on tumblr with questions/prompts/ etc.! @elinordashwoodbutwithmoresnark


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